Mystery Revealed- Metaio is Acquired by Apple

All the speculations have finally come to an end regarding the mysterious disappearance of Metaio. The augmented reality company which was launched in 2003, has been acquired by tech giant Apple. If you go to the company’s site, you will see that they have stopped taking new customers. The news of the acquisition by Apple has been confirmed from a legal document. The document shows a transfer of shares of Metaio to Apple on 21st or 22nd May. Metaio had worked with big names like Ikea, BMW, Macy’s and more.

TechCrunch had approached Apple to learn about this acquisition, but Apple gave its standard response as an acquisition confirmation “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

With the cancellation of the InsideAR conference, Metaio gave the first indication that something was amiss. Later its Twitter accounts were also removed and the company also posted in its website that the purchase of subscriptions and products are ending and they would provide email support till 30th June only.

TechCrunch had also tried getting in touch with Metaio but they didn’t make any comments about this acquisition. Clients of this company were worried about the abrupt closure of the services until now.

Projects by Metaio

Metaio has produced many impressive projects with its app and SDK. Their Ferrari project allows the potential customer to take a augmented reality tour of the car. The users are able to see the interior of the car through AR.

IKEA had released an interactive catalogue which came to life when the Metaio platform was used. Users could place virtual furniture in their home and see through augmented reality how the items would look like when placed in the real world.

This acquisition could enhance the augmented reality and virtual reality efforts of Apple. Apple had patented a VR headset that uses iPhones for functioning. Mark Gurman from 9To5Mac, reported that Apple is working on an AR feature for its Maps app. With this app, users could point at the exterior of a restaurant and see the menu; they could also point at a street and see nearby businesses. With Metaio’s augmented reality technology, Apple could certainly get help in this matter.

We can now hope that the augmented reality industry will expand even further with this acquisition by Apple.